Leadership & Infrastructure

Let me first acknowledge that this post has nothing to do with real firefighters - you know, the guys who actually risk their lives in burning buildings. This post has to do with business "fire fighters", those mid and senior level executives who rush into "critical" situations to clean up terrible customer service or rush to fill a product gap.

Every year, millions of people “resolve” to lose weight. It’s the number one goal set each January 1. And by about this time each year, it’s the most abandoned one. There are dozens of theories about why that might be, but the explanation I like most is that our optimism tends to overpower any thought of contingency planning.

Facebook acquired WhatsApp, a company with at most $300M revenues, and 55 employees, for $19billion. That's billion - with a "b." An astonishing figure that is second only to HP's acquisition of market leader Compaq, which had substantial revenues and profits, as tech acquisitions.

The constant rapid changes in today's business climate demands on-the-fly gear shifting for teams and business units. Few can afford to wait until next year's 3-day strategic offsite meeting, a model fast becoming a relic of more halcyon days. So how do you quickly and nimbly get everyone on board to create collective mindshare and emotional investment in charting a path for the foreseeable future?